


Extreme Prejudice

by InksandPens



Category: Animator vs. Animation (Short Film 2006)
Genre: I have feelings about it, and so does blue, but he did, green is mentioned but doesn't appear, orange "the second coming" is mentioned but doesn't appear, see alan didn't HAVE to animate DL kicking at Red's disintegrating code like so much useless dust, that is an artistic choice that alan made, the chosen one is mentioned but doesn't appear, the dark lord is mentioned but doesn't appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27406459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InksandPens/pseuds/InksandPens
Summary: It wasn’t that they had died. It was how it had happened. How, precisely, Dark Lord had done it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Extreme Prejudice

They were looking for the Dark Lord.

It was Chosen who had wanted to find him. Why he needed Orange for help in his search, Blue and the others didn’t know, but no way were they gonna let him go to possibly confront the mad stickfigure alone (sometimes being with Chosen _felt_ like being alone), no matter what happened last time.

What happened last time…that was Blue’s sticking point with the whole thing.

Not that they had died, no. Because, as Red had warily pointed out when she first said something, they had all died before. And come back before.

No, she told Red. It wasn’t that they had died. It was how it had happened. How, precisely, Dark Lord had done it.

* * *

When she had been thinking about it at first, the phrase “with extreme prejudice” came to mind. It sounded… _nasty_ enough. She found out later that the term didn’t actually denote any sort of feeling behind the action. Actually, she was surprised to discover that the definition of the term fit what Alan had done upon their first meeting a lot more.

She wasn’t thinking about that much. She hadn’t really known what was happening at the time. By the time she could comprehend it, enough time had passed and enough had changed between Alan and Orange that there was really no point in being upset over it.

And, yes, Alan had brought them back, but that had surprisingly little to do with her lack of negativity over the event.

Alan hadn’t kicked them while they were down.

* * *

Dark Lord had kicked Red. As Red had lay corrupting on the ground, Dark Lord had _kicked_ him, had ground his heel into Red’s ashes, shoving the remains of her friend away with his foot as if Red was just inconsequential dust. He hadn’t even fully dissipated yet. And Blue couldn’t forgive that.

* * *

They hadn’t understood, when she tried to explain this. What, Yellow had said, so she wasn’t mad that Dark Lord had killed them, but she was mad that he had been… _rude_ about it?

Blue had tried to explain. If you were rude about it, she’d said, then you didn’t really appreciate the enormity of what you’d just done to a fellow stickfigure. Did they think she had forgiven Orange just because Green _came back_? The game respawning her didn’t affect how Blue felt about the fact that she had died in the first place. What mattered was how clearly distraught Orange had been when he realized what he’d done.

(She had been horrified at herself, there in the funeral parlor they had built, that split second after the reflexive reaction. It took a moment to realize that if Green had come back once, she could surely come back again. But she promised herself that she would never forget that feeling. She hoped Orange wouldn’t either.)

* * *

Blue got sore about things. She got sore about Green’s perfectionism, she got sore about Red always rushing into things without thinking first, she got sore about Yellow getting sidetracked with his tinkering and not noticing the effects his experimentation had on his environment and the other stickfigures in it. But she could accept all that, in the long run.

She wasn’t sure she could accept this.

If they did find the Dark Lord, she would treat him however the others did. That didn’t mean she would forgive him.


End file.
